Hypothetical Near Birth Abortions – Why Pro-Life is *always* wrong.

Ah yes, the perennially wrong anti-choice, forced birth lobby loses again, and again and again. You never get to ignore the bodily autonomy of women and this comment from Pharyngula details precisely why.

The hate is because the hypothesizer is just so damned keen to find some way, some very very special exceptional circumstance, in which it’s OK to remove my bodily autonomy. It’s very much like asking me when is rape OK.

Never? Really never? Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…

Awww c’mon, pretty please, surely there must be ONE situation in which a woman can be reduced to a piece of livestock?

NO. FUCK OFF. IT IS NEVER OK.

Why are you being so meeeeean to me for just asking?

Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me? Why is it so unacceptable to you that I have bodily autonomy in all circumstances? NO, there isn’t a circumstance that makes you the rightful owner and master and torturer of me.

“On the off-chance that there are any “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”, I’d like to say the following:

Dear “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”:

Fuck off.

Wait, I should probably make it a little more clear about what kinds of people I’m talking about, so that they know that this message is for them.

You might be a “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of” person IF:

1. You think that, in some cases, women need to “take responsibility” for their actions. By this, you mean that women choose to have sex, and therefore they cannot choose NOT to be pregnant as a result of that sex. You think, or at least your attitude displays, that women who choose to have sex, women who choose to have a lot of sex, women who don’t always have safe sex, women who have sex in circumstances that you consider “iffy”, are “sluts”, and therefore need to be “taught” something so that they can mend their slutty, wicked ways.

2. You think that some women make the “right” choice for them, but that other women make the “selfish” choice. By this, you mean that you feel you are qualified to judge the appropriateness of someone else’s decision about a potentially life-changing situation, without actually being that person. A woman who chooses to have an abortion so that she can keep barely feeding her existing children – sad, but the “right” thing to do. A woman who is young, sexually promiscuous (for whatever “promiscuous” means to you), and seems more “care-free” than you think she should be – not sad, well-deserved, and the selfish bitch could use some “settling down”.

3. You think that some women might carry a pregnancy almost to term and then randomly decide to have an abortion. By this, you mean that a woman who has endured eight months, three weeks, six days and twenty-three hours of pregnancy has the potential to be flighty and impulsive enough to demand that someone kill her fetus.

Are we all clear on who I’m talking about now? Yes? Good.

I say again, fuck off.

My cousin nearly died last night. She went into eclampsia, in the last month of her pregnancy. She’s nineteen. She’s not married. She takes drugs. She’s unemployed. She’s had multiple sexual partners in her life.

In short, she is exactly the kind of person that people talk about (but never actually KNOW) when they say, “I’m pro-choice, BUT”.

You think she’s sexually promiscuous. Let me tell you that it’s hard to develop a healthy sexual attitude when your 20-year-old “boyfriend” coerced you into having sex when you were fourteen.

You think she’s irresponsible. Yeah, not having a firm support structure will do that to you. Not being allowed to grieve the death of your mother will do that to you. Being told of your mother’s sudden death due to side-effects of medication and then being told, “Okay, now go do your homework” will do that to you. Having your father emotionally abuse you and practically abandon you will do that to you. Being passed around from extended relative to extended relative, not having a stable home for more than a couple of years will do that to you. Being the youngest child in a family where all of your siblings are living far away, leaving you alone in a small, impossible-to-leave-town will do that to you. Living in a town that is mostly white, while you’re an adopted woman of color, will do that to you (along with all the judgments that go along with the “hypersexuality” of women of color). Having your own mother, before she passed, speak of adopting black children as if they were litters of puppies, will do that do you.

You might even try to seek comfort in bad places. You might accept the friendship of bad people, just so you won’t be alone. You might try to make some of your pain go away by taking drugs.

You might do that.

But you know what? “Sluts” die from pregnancy, too. Drug addicts die from pregnancy, too. Pregnancy is a medical condition. It doesn’t care what your circumstances are. It sure as hell doesn’t mete out “justice” or “punishment” for your actions and decisions. It kills “good” women as well as “bad” women.

But my cousin never had a choice. Not a real choice. She had no money for an abortion. She had no family that would help her if she did. It was all arranged – they would find an adoptive couple, and she would give the baby up. There was no discussion. My cousin didn’t have a say – after all, she brought this on herself, didn’t she? She can’t make choices about what happens to her own body when she depends on other people, can she?

No real choice for her, and she very nearly paid with her life. She started having seizures. The doctors did an emergency C-section (the baby is small, but should be fine) and continued surgery to try to save my cousin’s life. We don’t know yet if she will have brain damage as a result of those seizures.

So, to all of you “I’m pro-choice, BUT”:

Fuck off.

Who’s the one placing a value judgment on human life, here? Is it me (unequivocally pro-choice, abortion on demand)? Or is it you (I’m pro-choice, BUT)?”

And of course, the arguments that forced birth advocates refuse to answer and repeat what about the baaaaabY! Again.

But since the bodily rights argument is in no way reliant on how the fetus got there, that doesn’t matter. The woman doesn’t have the right to end the pregnancy because the fetus intentionally invaded her body. She has the right because she’s a human being.

Look, i am completely sympathetic to all arguments placing womans health above the the foetus.

The bodily rights argument doesn’t have anything to do with placing a woman’s health above a fetus. It doesn’t even, as I’ve said, have anything to do with placing a woman’s rights above a fetus. It has everything to do with simply respecting a woman’s right. That’s it.

I am not okay with saying a foetus is nothing

Whether the fetus is nothing, a full human being or somewhere in between, the bodily rights argument stands firm.

a woman may choose at the last minute to avoid a C-scar, even if that means a non-person foetus dies. Even if the womans negligence up to that point put her in that position

A woman may choose at the last minute to refuse any medical procedure, even if that means that a fully adult, 100% human person dies as a result, even if she’s personally, directly, solely and intentionally responsible for the situation.

That’s why – see if this sounds familiar – what you’re doing is the equivalent of giving a fetus more rights than any adult human being.

How long are you going to ignore the challenge to engage with this argument? How long are you going to dance around it? It’s been a hundred and fifty comments since I asked you to address it and so far you’ve not even shown a clear understanding of what the argument is, much less proposed any serious critique.”

The sooner the anti-choice lobby realizes that women are people with full rights to their body, the sooner they can refocus their energy into useful activities such as sex education, guaranteeing access to contraception for everyone and making sure women have the healthcare they need to do what is right for them and their families.

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11 comments

I love to catch the anti-choicers in slut-shaming. I am talking to one right now who thinks that it is wrong for a woman to ‘murder’ an innocent baby that is the product of consensual sex. However, she thinks abortion is acceptable if the fetus is conceived through rape.

When she responds next I am going to ask her if it is acceptable to murder a 5 year old if that 5 year old was conceived through rape. If she truly believes that an embryo is a person, she would not allow it to be ‘murdered’ for any reason.

I used to be one of those ‘I’m pro choice but…’ assholes too. Then my bipolar and ptsd ran out of control and my life fell apart and I was judged so deeply and harshly by so many people that I loved and respected that I learned a lesson about judging other people lives. I have a lot more respect for people going through hard times and making hard choices nowadays.

The quoted material is blunt. It is a product, if you read the thread on Pharyngula, this is the discussion that happens when PZ posts about abortion. The frustration is evident in the contents…but also the clarity of thought which is what I was going after.

Then my bipolar and ptsd ran out of control and my life fell apart and I was judged

I’m sorry you had to go through those ailments, as they tend to make life suck.

I learned a lesson about judging other people lives. I have a lot more respect for people going through hard times and making hard choices nowadays.

Rough way to learn. Empathy is a difficult skill to master. We all come with so many preconceived notions and built in biases, stripping that stuff away is never easy. It must have been a difficult journey for you.

It is even worse than you can imaging. The implicit right to privacy that is in the Rove vs Wade decision goes away when it is over turn. This right to privacy is what protects your body from the state. Before the right to privacy the state could forcefully sterilize you. Once it is gone the state will again forcefully sterilize the people it doesn’t like like the poor and the colored. Before the right to privacy the state could outlaw birth control. The state could tell how, when, how long and under what circumstances you could have sex. The state even has the right to rape and impregnate you. You have no rights and the state has all of the rights. Before the right to privacy the state had total control over you, total control. The state should never ever have this level of control. And if you don’t believe the state will do this things just look at the laws that some states have passed or tried to pass.

Well, my work was only in compiling the awesomeness of the commentariat at Pharyngula, they have a strong community their that are not afraid to share their thoughts and arguments on important issues. Thanks for taking the time to read the post and leave a comment. :)

There is one other corner that I love backing them into. It goes like this:

1) the embryo is just a young/small person
2) the embryo has the right to use another person’s body as life support

I then ask

1) would you support the right of a 45 year old child to demand his parents give organs/blood to keep him alive
2) would you support the right of a newborn to demand his parents organs/blood

They answer NO to the rights of a born child, regardless of age, to take blood/organs from it’s parents.
Yet, they think that an embryo should have unfettered use of a woman’s body

You see where I am going, don’t you?

They are discriminating against born children based on 1) size and 2) age

So the argument that they love to use “an embryo is just a point on the continuum of human development” falls completely flat.

—————————

We also run into another kind of anti-choicer, the one who believes that rape victims should be forced to bear their rapists child.

Those guys are easy to defeat. First off, their stances will be repugnant to most people, so they have already lost. Second, one just has to point out ‘you are giving potential rapists the right to decide when and if women get pregnant.’

I just read this on yahoo, from a commenter, another story worth sharing:

I used to be sad when tumors took my ability to procreate, now I am more terrified because a fertilized egg (with nowhere to implant ) will certainly kill me becuse of self-righteous bible-thumpers who don’t view women as human. Now, if I end up pregnant (by my husband) with an ectopic pregnancy, I suppose you will be happy that I have to die because your useless laws have made it illegal to remove the lump of cells that will never become a person. I have no uterus, but still have my ovaries, and live with the fear that if I do get pregnant (now that we have this lovely heartbeat law) I will just sit around and wait to die because of idiot politicians who claim “there is no need for an exemption for the health of the mother, due to modern medicine”